


Voices in Your Head Aren't Necessarily a Bad Thing

by MagdaTheMagpie



Series: Marvel & Magic [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Stalking, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagdaTheMagpie/pseuds/MagdaTheMagpie
Summary: Clint finally has a superpower of his own, only it isn't one. It's much better than that.





	Voices in Your Head Aren't Necessarily a Bad Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Marvelously Magical Bingo 2018!  
> Square G4: Accidental Telepathy

Whenever the Avengers have been a couple of days without some dastardly villain trying to destroy the city, something weird is bound to happen to one of them. It’s mathematical. So no one is surprised when Clint runs into the kitchen that morning, looking both panicked and delighted. “I have a superpower!” he exclaims. 

Natasha, Steve and Tony who are the only ones up at such an ungodly hour, and the latter only because he hadn't actually gone to bed yet, look nonplussed at the archer.

“Don't you have a superpower already, birdbrain?” Tony asks.

“I have good eyesight and shit hearing. I don't call that a superpower. It's compensation, at best. No, I have a real one now!”

“Well, by all means, show it off!”

Clint… looks constipated for all of a minute before he stops… whatever he was doing.

“Uhm… Doesn't seem to be working just yet.”

“What did it do?” Natasha asks now that her cup is empty.

“I could hear… someone. Their thoughts, I mean, not what they were actually saying, because no one would say that out loud, except maybe Tony, if he was a woman-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tony interrupts, waving his hands around like a lunatic. “You mean to tell us you're basically hearing voices. Am I the only one worried here?”

“No, that is quite worrisome. Do you need me to hit your head really hard again?” Natasha says with her Cheshire cat smile.

“You're all missing the point,” Steve adds and Clint nods at him in thanks. “What are the voices saying? Because if they're telling him to file his missions’ paperwork, I say we leave it at that.”

Clint huffs and leaves because there's only so much mockery he can take before his first cup of coffee. A coffee shop full of potential threats sounds like a much better option than the tower's kitchen this morning.

_ “I need coffee so bad, _ ” a woman comments near him, sounding like she just got out of bed herself with a bad hangover

“Tell me about it,” Clint muttered, glaring at the back of every person in front of him in the never ending line.

He glances around to find the equally bad-tempered coffee-junky, wondering if she would like to team up for a coffee-heist and be done with the waiting, but there are only men close by, which is how he knows it was the voice again.

Probably the same one, in fact, because it had a snotty accent like Jarvis.

“ _ I swear if George slips me another potion, I will feed his balls to my cat.” _

Clint winces.  _ That's a bit extreme. _

“ _ No it's not! It tasted foul! Wait… what? Who's in my head?” _

_ “I'm not in your head. You’re in mine.” _

_ “I can assure you I'm not. I'm in my pajamas in my hotel room.” _

_ “At least I know I'm not making you up, or I would have said naked. So… this is weird.” _

_ “That you're perving on a disembodied voice? Quite.” _

_ “You don't seem very surprised about the telepathy bit. Not that I mind myself. It's kind of cool. Think we can eavesdrop on anyone else?” _

_ “You can try. I know I am.” _

After a few minutes of trying to read the minds of people around him, but only hearing the frustrated thoughts from the same woman as before, Clint comes to the conclusion he's no Professor Xavier with his one on one telepathy link.

“ _ Well,”  _ the woman thinks and he can almost feel her exasperation. “ _ Now I know what that potion did, although that doesn't mean it's what it was supposed to do. Why you, though? Do we know each other? Are you special? Were you slipped a potion too?” _

Clint is glad her string of questions has ended. With the speed she’s thinking at, he'd soon forget the beginning of her interrogation.

_ “I don't know. I don't think so. Define ‘special’. And… potion?” _

The woman sighs.

_ “This is worse than I thought. I'm going to find George, get an antidote from him, and then kill him with my bare hands.” _

_ “How long is that going to take you? Not that I mind your company, but I doubt I'll be sent on missions if I can hear voices my head, especially since I was already mind controlled once before.” _

_ “Ah. So you  _ are _ special. Good. It shouldn't take me long. George is in the room next to mine if I remember correctly. Hotel rooms all look the same after a while, and I only know I'm in New York because I can see the Empire State building from here.” _

Clint nods at her wisdom. He has the same problem when he goes on long missions for SHIELD. Sometimes, he doesn't even know what  _ country _ he's in. Not that he'd admit it to his mind-visitor since she already seems to consider him something of an idiot.

He belatedly realizes he’s lucky she hasn't heard that, but seems to have a pretty good grasp on what thoughts he wants her to hear or not. He grimaces at the idea he might have Loki to thank for that.

Clint hears her using very colourful curses on her way to her friend's room and he almost pities the poor guy. Meanwhile, he finally has his cup of overpriced, but delicious, coffee in his hand and he heads out to enjoy it, then decides to visit his new friend. They're both in New-York, after all. It would be a shame not too, and he’s naturally nosy too, so he basically doesn't have a choice.

The connection between them seems to have closed off though, because he hasn't heard a peep out of her since she knocked on George's door. Maybe it's because she's too focused on murdering the poor guy.

He lands his empty cup into a recycling bin from thirty feet. A potshot by his standards, but he gets high fived by some random dude for it. He loves New York.

There are not all that many hotels that have a direct view on the Empire State building, but it's still a lot of places to go through to find a person he’s never seen before. He considers using Jarvis, but that would feel like cheating, and not half as fulfilling as finding his mind-stowaway on his own.

_ “Hey! Lady? Voice in my head? Knock-Knock!” _

_ “That's probably the strangest greeting I've received yet.” _

_ “We forgot to introduce ourselves. How else am I supposed to get your attention? And why aren't I hearing you at all anymore? I thought it was a fluke, but it's been a while now.” _

_ “I've been shielding my mind.” _

_ “You can do that?” _

_ “Sure.” _

Clint is certain she had just shrugged, as if protecting her mind is no big deal. That and her earlier mention of potions makes him think he may have stumbled on something bigger than just mental illness or imaginary friends.

_ “So I'm Clint. Hi. Nice to meet you.” _

_ “I'm not introducing myself to a voice in my head.” _

_ “Ah. Last one dumped you, didn't it?” _

_ “What?”  _ she spluttered. “ _ No! I mean there wasn't- I never-” _

Clint snickers at having flustered her so much with so little effort.

_ “Bit uptight that one.” _

_ “Hey! I heard that! And I'm not uptight, thank you very much.” _

_ Oops _ . Clint could hear her mental door slam shut and he confirmed it after calling her unsuccessfully for the next ten minutes. Well, now he  _ has _ to find her and give her flowers or some shit to apologize. So he goes to every hotel in the area to have a peak at their registry looking for a bloke named George and keeping an ear open for the snobby British accent that always stands out in a crowd of drawling Americans.

And what do you know? He hears her, and not in his head. It's a bit different: the tone softer, amused where he'd only heard mild annoyance and irritation. His head snaps around at the sound and he stares at the woman it belongs to. He didn't know what to expect but he's still surprised by the pocket sized woman with wild dark hair who walks right by him, chatting a mile a minute to a tall lanky redhead who is missing an ear.

_ “Did she literally talk his ear off?” _

The woman stops dead in her tracks, right there in the middle of the hotel's lobby.

_ “What?” _

She's in his head now.

_ “What what?” _ he parrots back, rooted to the spot while his instincts are screaming at him to get the hell out of Dodge.

_ “You're stalking me!”  _ she accuses. “ _ What you just said… You're here. At least have the guts to face me.” _

_ “Right now, I'm not sure I want to. You're scary and I forgot the flowers in the last air duct.” _

_ “Flowers?” _

_ “Yeah… I wanted to apologize for what I said before. Well, thought, technically. I didn't mean to.” _

Ominous silence fills his mind for the next few seconds and he's so focused on his mental connection that he didn't even see her move to stand right in front of him until she calls his name.

“Clint?”

He flinches, then stares wide eyed down at her. She has eyes like Natasha's: burning and sharp, like jagged pieces of fire.

“ _ Why are tiny women so damn terrifying?” _

“I’ll pretend I didn't hear that,” she says and is actually smiling at him now.

“That your bloke?” his red-headed friend asks as he looms behind her, pwering at him distrustfully.

Hermione glances around and shakes her head.

“Not here. Come on, they have quiet alcoves we can speak in at the hotel bar.”

“I guess he wins in the looks department,” the red-head mutters once they're seated. “If you like your men with two ears and arms like tree trunks that is.”

“George!” the woman snaps. “You're the one who slipped me that potion so you'll bloody well suffer through the consequences. Maybe that'll teach you a lesson.”

Clint is torn between preening at being told he's better looking, although he has no idea who his competition is supposed to be, and then he's just plain annoyed at being left out of the conversation again. He coughs politely to remind them he's here and waiting for some kind of explanation.

“Right, sorry. Yes. So this is George as you might have guessed. Seems the berk thought himself in love with me, but instead of asking me out like any normal bloke would have done, he gave me a potion to prove to me he was my soulmate, because that's a reasonable thing to do.” She pauses long enough to roll her eyes and sip at her glass of wine. “He's a genius at potions, but completely clueless about women.”

“Wait…” 

Clint isn't a genius at anything but hitting the bullseye, and that doesn't take all that much thinking on his part, but he's not an idiot either. It's that potion that put them in contact, the potion that was supposed to reveal her soulmate… 

“Ah. I see you've figured it out already.”

“But… soulmates?”

“Yeah, I don't believe much in that crap either, to be honest. The fact we were both in New York when it happened seems a bit too coincidental too.”

Clint nods. She could have been in her own country when it happened and he could have been anywhere in the world on a mission for SHIELD or the Avengers.

“So it actually just put you in contact with the most compatible male in a five mile radius?”

“To put it simply, yes.”

She smiled approvingly and he had to wonder how compatible they were exactly, and on what grounds? Was this potion more of a Tinder or an OkCupid sort of deal?

“It's not a five mile radius. My potions are a lot more potent than that.”

“ Yes, because that's the important part,” the woman snapped.

“Actually, I wouldn't mind an estimate. You know… for science.”

She blinked, then burst out laughing.

“You mean for your male ego? Fine,” she shrugged. “Go ahead, George. Dazzle us.”

“Should be at least a hundred miles.”

Clint whistles at the news. That's better than he expected.

“And how reliable is it?” he asks.

“100%” George mutters.

“Alright, so how do we stop this telepathy thing now,” his perfect match in a hundred mile radius asks. “I thought it would stop now that we've met, but I'm still hearing him in the back of my mind.”

“That’s so not fair. I can't hear anything,” Clint says. It's not any fun if it only works for her. “How do we stop it?”

George mumbles under his breath, glaring a hole into his cup.

“What was that George?”

He remains silent, sulking like a kid.

“Oh, you want me to ask your mother?” she needles.

She's ruthless. Clint likes her even more.

“You kiss,” George finally huffs. “Come on, it's pretty obvious. And they say you're the brightest-”

That sentence ends in a painful grunt. Seems like the lady hath some mighty pointy elbows.

“So…” she says.

“We just have to kiss, right?”

He's not opposed. She's lovely when she's not scary, but it's a bit awkward sitting here in the middle of a hotel with a reluctant chaperon glaring at him.

“How about a date first?” she offers and his shoulders sag in relief.

“How about your name first?” he counters.

  
  
  



End file.
